The primary objective of this web site is to provide musicologists
studying traditional chanting systems of the Eastern Orthodox Christian
Church (and its various ethnic groups) with a comprehensive and continually-expanding
compilation of documentation and resources to support their research.

A secondary objective of this project is to educate church musicians and
leaders in the concept that contemporary Orthodox liturgical music has become
a victim of Western European captivity, subjugation and obliteration of
its indigenous musical cultures. Furthermore, this web site intends to provide
the tools necessary for church musicians to relearn their traditional chanting
systems.

The third objective of this site is to help revive a popular interest in
traditional Orthodox music drawn from authentic sources. There has been
much interest in "roots music" in the contemporary folk music
scene. Most visible are the Celtic folk and African folk revivals, but there
has also been considerable work to promote the indigenous folk music of
many other cultures, including Scandinavian, Mid-eastern and Oriental music.
Now is the time for people to recognize that ancient traditions such as
Byzantine, Znamenny and Georgian liturgical music (and so many more styles)
deserve not only to be recognized as valuable relics of the past, but to
continue their existence and to flourish in our times. Many isolated groups
of worshippers continue to preserve these vocal traditions intact, and we
can turn to them for example and guidance. Furthermore, extensive research
has been done in earlier forms of Orthodox chanting and liturgics, and we
have been able to reconstruct many of the traditions which have either died
out or have been obscured by foreign cultural domination for the past several
hundred years. Now is the time for us to reclaim our birthrights and to
breathe new life into our inheritance.